Economics

And Then the Roof Caved In lays bare the truth of the credit crisis, whose defining emotion at every turn has been greed, and whose defining failure is the complicity of the U.S. government in letting that greed rule the day. Written by CNBC's David Faber, this book painstakingly details the truth of what really happened with compelling characters who offer their first-hand accounts of what they did and why they did it.

Page by page, Faber explains the events of the previous seven years that planted the seeds for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He begins in 2001, when the Federal Reserve embarked on an unprecedented effort to help the economy recover from the attacks of 9/11 by sending interest rates to all time lows. Faber also gives you an up-close look at where the crisis was incubated and unleashed upon the world-Wall Street-and introduces you to insiders from investment banks and mortgage lenders to ratings agencies, that unwittingly conspired to insure lending standards were abandoned in the head long rush for profits.

From regulators who tried to stop this problem before it swung out of control to hedge fund managers who correctly foresaw the coming housing crash and profited from it, And Then the Roof Caved In shows you how the crisis we currently face came to be.

From the shuttered factories of the Rust Belt to the strip malls of the Sun Belt-and almost everywhere in between-America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little- examined obsession with bargains is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time, having fueled an excess of consumerism that blights our land-scapes, escalates personal debt, lowers our standard of living, and even skews of our concept of time.

Spotlighting the peculiar forces that drove Americans away from quality, durability, and craftsmanship and towards quantity, quantity, and more quantity, Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the rise of the bargain through our current big-box profusion to expose the astronomically high cost of cheap.

The 10th Anniversary Edition features extensive new commentaries by industry leaders, but the core message of this modern business classic remains intact.

Most of us face the same questions every day: What do I want? How can I get it? How can I live more happily and work more efficiently?

Whether you're a chronic second-guesser or just eager for new ways to look at your world, Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschppeler will teach you how to improve your understanding of the dilemmas you face and how to make better decisions every day. Taught in MBA courses and elsewhere, The Decision Book contains classics like the Swiss Cheese Model for reviewing mistakes and the Personal Performance Model for testing whether or not to switch jobs. This revised edition includes a model for identifying cognitive biases and the expectation model to help you choose a life partner. Stylish and compact, The Decision Book is the perfect reference to consult at any crossroads.